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Taking Stock of Democratic Innovations and Their Emergence in (unlikely) Authoritarian Contexts

Demokratische Innovationen im (unerwarteten) Kontext autoritärer Systeme

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Abstract

There is no better time than now to take stock of the trajectory of “democratic innovations” in Western democracies, amidst the burgeoning clamour of democratic dissatisfaction and the populist threat to liberal democratic institutions. This article takes the opportunity to discuss the concept of democratic innovations, reflecting on what is truly so democratic about democratic innovations when these practices have also emerged in the unlikely places of authoritarian systems. To do so, it briefly revisits the normative assumptions of these democratic innovations, as well as discusses and assesses the conditions under which such novel institutional ideas function. At the same time, a look at democratic innovations in authoritarian systems uncovers a more nuanced discourse. By examining the contributions of democratic innovations beyond the usual democratic systems, this review article provides a thoughtful premise for reconsidering the rationale, motivation, and functions of democratic innovations that—in the end—might not be so different in democratic and non-democratic systems.

Zusammenfassung

„Demokratische Innovationen“ werden oft als Mittel gegen die zunehmende Unzufriedenheit mit liberal-demokratischen Institutionen und gegen deren Bedrohung durch erstarkende populistische Bewegungen gesehen. In diesem Artikel wird das Konzept der demokratischen Innovationen diskutiert und die Frage nach deren tatsächlichem demokratischem Potenzial gestellt – angesichts ihrer zunehmenden Verbreitung in autoritären Systemen. Dazu wird der Fokus auf die normativen Annahmen gelegt, die dem Konzept der demokratischen Innovationen oftmals inhärent sind, und es werden die Bedingungen, unter denen solche Innovationen tatsächlich einen Beitrag zur Demokratie leisten, überprüft. Dabei eröffnet der Blick auf demokratische Innovationen in autoritären Systemen eine Möglichkeit, die Entstehungsgründe, die Logik und die Funktion solcher Innovationen zu erörtern – sowie festzustellen, dass sich diese im demokratischen oder nichtdemokratischen Kontext letztlich gar nicht so stark unterscheiden.

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Notes

  1. While some regimes such as North Korea, Sudan, and China are obviously authoritarian, hybrid regimes (Bogaards 2009; Diamond 2002; Karl 1995) such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Turkey, which contain both elements of democracy and authoritarianism, are considered to be a softer form of an authoritarian system. This conceptual development reflects a “shift from democracy with adjectives to authoritarianism with adjectives” (Gilbert and Mohseni 2011), where authoritarian regimes are increasingly recognised to be heterogeneous with different characteristics to differentiate one from one another.

  2. Echoing the previous discussion on how the innovative feature of democratic innovations highly depends on the context, this is a good example of the relative difference when determining whether a new political practice is a democratic innovation or not. Elections will hardly be considered a democratic innovation in the Western context since they are well established and institutionalised. However, in China, village elections were deemed as novel political experiments carried out on a fairly large (at least at the grassroots level) scale with democratic consequences because they created unprecedented opportunities for rural residents to participate in the popular selection of local leaders. In this regard, the grassroots electoral experiment in China can be considered a democratic innovation.

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  1. Department of Political Science, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Su Yun Woo

  2. Department of Political Science and Centre for Democracy Studies, University of Zurich, Affolternstrasse 56, 8050, Zurich, Switzerland

    Daniel Kübler

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Paper submitted to a special issue of Politische Vierteljahresschrift on Frontiers of Democracy, edited by Brigitte Geissel and Ferdinand Müller-Römmel.

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Woo, S.Y., Kübler, D. Taking Stock of Democratic Innovations and Their Emergence in (unlikely) Authoritarian Contexts. Polit Vierteljahresschr 61, 335–355 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-020-00236-4

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